Angola

Christianity

Religious affiliation in Angola was difficult to define
because
many who claimed membership in a specific Christian
denomination
also shared perceptions of the natural and supernatural
order
characteristic of indigenous religious systems. Sometimes
the
Christian sphere of the life of a community was
institutionally
separate from the indigenous sphere. In other cases, the
local
meaning and practice of Christianity were modified by
indigenous
patterns of belief and practice.

Although Roman Catholic missions were largely staffed
by nonPortuguese during the colonial era, the relevant statutes
and
accords provided that foreign missionaries could be
admitted only
with the approval of the Portuguese government and the
Vatican and
on condition that they be integrated with the Portuguese
missionary
organization. Foreign Roman Catholic missionaries were
required to
renounce the laws of their own country, submit to
Portuguese law,
and furnish proof of their ability to speak and write the
Portuguese language correctly. Missionary activity was
placed under
the authority of Portuguese priests. All of this was
consistent
with the Colonial Act of 1930, which advanced the view
that
Portuguese Catholic missions overseas were "instruments of
civilization and national influence." In 1940 the
education of
Africans was declared the exclusive responsibility of
missionary
personnel. All church activities, education included, were
to be
subsidized by the state. In reality, Protestant missions
were
permitted to engage in educational activity, but without
subsidy
and on condition that Portuguese be the language of
instruction
(see Education
, this ch.).

The important Protestant missions in place in the 1960s
(or
their predecessors) had arrived in Angola in the late
nineteenth
century and therefore had been at work before the
Portuguese
managed to establish control over the entire territory.
Their early
years, therefore, were little affected by Portuguese
policy and
practice. Before the establishment of the New State
(Estado Novo)
in Portugal in 1926, the authorities kept an eye on the
Protestant
missions but were not particularly hostile to them
(see Angola under the New State
, ch. 1). Settlers and local
administrators
often were hostile, however, because Protestant
missionaries tended
to be protective of what they considered their charges. In
those
early years and later, Protestant missionaries were not
only
evangelists but also teachers, healers, and
counselors--all perhaps
in a paternal fashion but in ways that involved contact
with
Africans in a more sustained fashion than was
characteristic of
Roman Catholic missionaries and local administrators.

Protestant missionaries worked at learning the local
languages,
in part to communicate better with those in their mission
field,
but above all in order to translate the Old Testament and
the New
Testament into African tongues. Protestant missionaries
were much
more likely than administrators and settlers to know a
local
language. Roman Catholic missionaries did not similarly
emphasize
the translation of the Bible and, with some exceptions,
did not
make a point of learning a Bantu language.

Because specific Protestant denominations were
associated with
particular ethnic communities, the structure of religious
organization was linked to the structure of these
communities. This
connection was brought about in part by the tendency of
entire
communities to turn to the variety of Protestantism
offered
locally. The conversion of isolated individuals was rare.
Those
individuals who did not become Christians remained to a
greater or
lesser extent adherents of the indigenous system; unless
they
migrated to one of the larger towns, persons of a specific
locality
did not have the option of another kind of Christianity.
Those
members of a community who had not yet become Christians
were tied
by kinship and propinquity to those individuals who had.
On the one
hand, indigenous patterns of social relations affected
church
organization; on the other hand, the presence of
Christians in the
community affected the local culture to varying degrees.
Christians
who could quote Scripture in the local tongue contributed
phrases
to it that others picked up, and the attributes of the
Christian
God as interpreted by the specific denomination sometimes
became
attached to the high god of the indigenous religious
system and
typically made that deity more prominent than previously.

The involvement of the Protestant churches in the
languages of
their mission areas, their medical and other welfare
activity, and
their ability to adapt to local structures or (in the case
of the
Methodists among the Mbundu) to be fortuitously consistent
with
them gave Protestants much more influence than their
numbers would
suggest. For example, the leaders of the three major
nationalist
movements in the 1970s--the MPLA, UNITA, and the FNLA--had
been
raised as Protestants, and many others in these movements
were also
Protestants, even if their commitment may have diminished
over
time.

Estimates of the number of Roman Catholics in Angola
varied.
One source claimed that about 55 percent of the population
in 1985
was Roman Catholic; another put the proportion in 1987 at
68
percent. Most Roman Catholics lived in western Angola, not
only
because that part of the country was the most densely
populated but
also because Portuguese penetration into the far interior
was
comparatively recent and Roman Catholic missionaries
tended to
follow the flag. The most heavily Roman Catholic area
before
independence was Cabinda Province, where most of the
people were
Bakongo. Bakongo in Angola proper were not quite so
heavily Roman
Catholic, and Protestantism was very influential there.
There was
a substantial proportion of Roman Catholics among the
Mbundu in
Luanda and Cuanza Norte provinces. Less heavily Catholic
were the
Ovimbundu-populated provinces of Benguela and Huambo,
although the
city of Huambo had been estimated to be two-thirds
Catholic. In the
southern and eastern districts, the proportion of Roman
Catholics
dropped considerably.

The proportion of Protestants in the Angolan population
was
estimated at 10 percent to 20 percent in the late 1980s.
The
majority of them presumably were Africans, although some
mestišos may have been affiliated with one or
another
Protestant church.

The government recognized eleven Protestant
denominations: the
Assembly of God, the Baptist Convention of Angola, the
Baptist
Evangelical Church of Angola, the Congregational
Evangelical Church
of Angola, the Evangelical Church of Angola, the
Evangelical Church
of South-West Angola, the Our Lord Jesus Christ Church in
the World
(Kimbanguist), the Reformed Evangelical Church of Angola,
the
Seventh-Day Adventist Church, the Union of Evangelical
Churches of
Angola, and the United Methodist Church.

In the late 1980s, statistics on Christian preferences
among
ethnic groups were unavailable, but proportions calculated
from the
1960 census probably had not changed significantly.
According to
the 1960 census, about 21 percent of the Ovimbundu were
Protestants, but later estimates suggest a smaller
percentage. The
sole Protestant group active among the Mbundu was the
Methodist
Mission, largely sponsored by the Methodist Episcopal
Church of the
United States. Portuguese data for 1960 indicated that
only 8
percent of the Mbundu considered themselves Protestants,
but
Protestant missions had considerable success among the
Dembos. As
many as 35 percent of the Bakongo were considered
Protestants by
the official religious census of 1960, with Baptists being
the most
numerous.

In addition to the Protestant churches directly
generated by
the missions and continuing in a more or less orthodox
pattern,
there were other groups, which stemmed at least in part
from the
Protestant experience but expressed a peculiarly local
tendency and
which were dominated entirely by Africans. The number of
Angolans
identifying with such African churches is not known, but
it is
reasonable to assume that many Angolans were attached to
them.